DIW: Zmodo Pivot

By Shane Konicki&nbsp|&nbsp

Posted: Wed 11:43 PM, Jul 19, 2017&nbsp|&nbsp

Updated: Thu 4:52 AM, Jul 20, 2017

Your home is important, and that's why this week Does It Work teamed up with Factfinder 12 to test the Zmodo Pivot. The home security camera promises to keep an eye on your home when you're not around.

The Zmodo Pivot is a home security camera that rotates 360 degrees when it detects motion. It then scans the area and records what it sees. Sensors that come with the Zmodo Pivot detect when windows or doors are opened, and it sends alerts to your phone. It also has the ability to manually scan your home from your smart phone.

To find out, we jumped in on Factfinder 12's "Criminal Minds" investigation. They sent our personal protection expert, Joe Schillaci, into a home to see where burglars go and what items they're after.

We asked Kerry, the homeowner, to use the Zmodo to monitor her home to find out if it works.

"It looks cool," says Kerry. "I mean it looks kind of high tech. Maybe the distance. How close do you have to be to get it to move would be the only thing that I would question if it would work or not."

We take a look at the instructions and set up the Zmodo Pivot. Kerry starts to place the sensors that come with the product on the front and back doors.

"We set it to away, and we're going to see what happens when we open the door - if it sends me an alert or notifies me in some way," says Kerry.

We open the door - and Kerry gets the alert. But the Pivot doesn't turn towards the door to record the entryway.

We check our instructions and try to set a pre-set camera location, but Kerry runs into a problem.

"We're getting an error message saying that we need to be on the same WIFI, but we are on the same WIFI," she says.

The time comes for FactFinder 12 to do their investigation, and for us to test the Zmodo Pivot away from the home.

Kerry and her family monitor their house from pre-placed security cameras. From back at our station, they watch Joe Schillaci enter their home.

He opens the front door, but Kerry doesn't immediately receive an alert that the door has been opened. After about 10 minutes of Joe going through the house, Kerry finally receives a message to her phone.

"I did get a couple of alerts that motion was detected, but it was really delayed and after the fact," she says.

Even though the door sensors sent an alert when the door opened when we were back in Kerry's kitchen, she didn't receive one at our station.

"Yeah, there's no alerts for doors being closed since we've been gone," she says.

The motion sensors catch our photographer setting up hidden cameras and send an alert, but other motion alerts seem to miss recording what set it of.

"That's actually when no one was even in there," says Kerry.

We let Kerry and her family keep the Zmodo for a week after our test to keep experimenting with it. We checked back in with her to see what her final thoughts were.

"Overall thought, it's inconsistent. Without it being 100% reliable, I don't feel like it would help you for what you're trying to accomplish with it," says Kerry.

We still have to ask - does it work?

"No," says Kerry.

We reached out to the company. It told us the problems Kerry was having with the camera's ability to turn to the door when a sensor is triggered can be fixed with a manual firmware update.

She re-downloaded her Zmodo app and found that problem went away.

As for the problems with the pivot being inconsistent, the company says it is constantly improving its motion detection algorithms, so that consistency will get better as new updates come out.

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